Cross Cultural Intelligence

Cross Cultural Intelligence

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The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis pointed out the principle of linguistic relativity that an individual's thoughts and actions are determined by the language or languages that individual speaks (Linguist, n.d.). In another words, that language is influenced by external reality, making an impression on language and constraining the way a valid language can be. There is also a strong version of the theory, state by its principle of linguistic determinism that all human thoughts and actions are bound by the restraints of language (Linguist, n.d.).
The theory was first introduced in 1940 by linguist Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Lee Whorf and it gained controversy in the latter half of the 20th century due to the lack of experimental evidence; reopening debate about the extent to which language can inﬂuences non-linguistic cognition (Zhifang, 2002).
In his study, anthropologist Benjamin Whorf, noted that "after long and careful study of cultures with basically different languages," he found that the language of the Hopi Indians, "contain no words, grammatical forms, constructions, or expressions that refer directly to what we call 'time'," (Levinson, 2010). However, the linguist Ekkehart Malotki validated against this evidence in his book, Hopi Time, in 1983, showing that the Hopis actually had a lot of words referring to time (Kodish, 2003). Steven Pinker, an expert in linguistics and psy-chology, also claims that Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is "wrong, all wrong" and he suggests that Whorf exaggerated and misinterpreted the number of Eskimo words for snow where from report, there is only four Eskimo words for snow made by Boas in 1911 (Kodish, 2003).
Adding on to the controversy, as Geoffrey K. Pullum indicated in his work, The great Eskimo vocabulary hoax, that "If each language had its own completely distinct reality within it, how could literary works, instruction manuals and any form of written texts be regularly translated and communicated every day?"...